The present disclosure relates to a search device, and can be applied to a search device including an associative memory, for example.
An associative memory is configured by a Content Addressable Memory (hereinafter, simply referred to as a CAM), for example. CAMs each generates, for search (input) data given thereto, an index (address) of the CAM in which the search (input) data is stored. CAMs are used in wide applications including pattern matching, a router of the Internet, a cache of a processor, a TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer), data compression, an accelerator of a database, a neural network, and memory patch, for example. The CAMs are usually classified into two types, i.e., binary CAMs (hereinafter, referred to as “BCAM”) and ternary CAMs (hereinafter, referred to as “TCAMs”). A BCAM stores 0 and 1 in each cell. A TCAM stores 0, 1, and * in each cell. “*” represents “don't care” and matches both 0 and 1.
Techniques related to the present disclosure are U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,874,016 and 7,024,515, for example.